11th overall pick in the 2023 Entry Draft

[Provost]

23 hours ago, McBackup said:

It will be something like our 1st + Myers and Beauvillier for some even worse albatross like Jones or Huberdeau in hopes of a bounce back.

 

Time is a flat circle afterall.

You forgot us throwing in a 2nd round pick….

[DSVII]

7 minutes ago, King Heffy said:

But you can absolutely blame Gillis for the Luongo trade where he crippled the franchise thanks to being stupid enough to retain salary instead of using a compliance buyout.  He also bungled the Ballard deal badly without checking to see whether or not AV would even play him.  That salary could have been real useful in 2011, as would the assets used in the trade.  The drafting record with the picks Gillis kept was also historically bad, regardless of position.  Benning did better even if you ignore the the first rounders.  Benning wasn't great, but at least had experience in hockey ops.  Gillis had literally no qualifications, and showed it by being one of the worst GMs in the history of the sport.  Only Milbury was obviously worse.  Benning was set up to fail getting stuck with that mess.  He didn't do great either, but he was nowhere close to the Gillis level of gross incompetence.

Benning had no concept of draft capital or cap space. This team today and for the next five to seven years is going to live with the consequences of his undisciplined spending and short term thinking. You can see the principle of why Gillis made the Ballard trade, it just didn't work out. It happens. It makes more sense than Benning trying to chase an overpaid offensive LD when you have a stay at home shutdown RHD waiting and willing to sign in the offseason you 'ran out of time' in. 

 

We've been over the draft position and % probability. I'm not giving Gillis too much flack for missing a pick in a spot that had a 5% chance of hitting considering Benning flubbed multiple times with picks that are proven to be 90%+ hit rates for NHL players in the top 10. Not to mention he got way more attempts to hit on those players in the top 10 part of the draft. It's apples and oranges.

 

Luongo netted us Markstrom, and plus pieces like Tanev and Edler kept Benning's illusion of being able to put together an NHL roster afloat until 2020 when the bottom fell out.

 

Benning's time here is to GMs what SVB is to banks. Winning GMs right now are copying a lot of what Gillis used to put together that 2011 team. Benning is going to be a case study of what not to do. 

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by DSVII

[McBackup]

3 minutes ago, Provost said:

You forgot us throwing in a 2nd round pick….

And the player we'll have to pay to move off of once again down the line when we're deeper in cap hell. 

[iceman64]

On 5/8/2023 at 6:23 PM, Ghostsof1915 said:

Knowing the Canucks.

Michkov and Reinbacher will be available at 11.

And the Canucks will draft Michkov.

Of course, that's how it works here. Reinbacher pls! 

[iceman64]

3 hours ago, McBackup said:

And the player we'll have to pay to move off of once again down the line when we're deeper in cap hell. 

Obviously you haven't looked at what our roster is going to look like cap wise in 2024 have you? cap hell, cap schmell... Not even..

Seriously, go have a look at the RFA's and FA's for 2024-25

[iceman64]

3 hours ago, DSVII said:

Benning had no concept of draft capital or cap space. This team today and for the next five to seven years is going to live with the consequences of his undisciplined spending and short term thinking. You can see the principle of why Gillis made the Ballard trade, it just didn't work out. It happens. It makes more sense than Benning trying to chase an overpaid offensive LD when you have a stay at home shutdown RHD waiting and willing to sign in the offseason you 'ran out of time' in. 

 

We've been over the draft position and % probability. I'm not giving Gillis too much flack for missing a pick in a spot that had a 5% chance of hitting considering Benning flubbed multiple times with picks that are proven to be 90%+ hit rates for NHL players in the top 10. Not to mention he got way more attempts to hit on those players in the top 10 part of the draft. It's apples and oranges.

 

Luongo netted us Markstrom, and plus pieces like Tanev and Edler kept Benning's illusion of being able to put together an NHL roster afloat until 2020 when the bottom fell out.

 

Benning's time here is to GMs what SVB is to banks. Winning GMs right now are copying a lot of what Gillis used to put together that 2011 team. Benning is going to be a case study of what not to do. 

 

Were you even paying attention this whole time?! Do you anything about hockey, contract law and Canada at all???  I doubt it.. highly doubt it.. . 

 And of course Benning did flubs here and there but he did a lot of good things under the circumstances too but tell me what GM has ever been perfect or anywhere near close, being a GM is being involved in a crap shoot that you have limited odds at best! 

 I'm tired of hearing idiots bash someone when they haven't been watching since the start of the franchise or have been and are just that stupid. It's only one way or the other.. 

 So I'm going to ask you this to give you a chance to prove otherwise. 

 Go back and look at the broken,  half a full LOCKED in roster, the empty farm, and next to zero picks in 2013 plus Luongo's recapture. and tell me what YOU would have done.

 

 

 

[Dazzle]

4 hours ago, DSVII said:

Benning had no concept of draft capital or cap space. This team today and for the next five to seven years is going to live with the consequences of his undisciplined spending and short term thinking. You can see the principle of why Gillis made the Ballard trade, it just didn't work out. It happens. It makes more sense than Benning trying to chase an overpaid offensive LD when you have a stay at home shutdown RHD waiting and willing to sign in the offseason you 'ran out of time' in. 

 

We've been over the draft position and % probability. I'm not giving Gillis too much flack for missing a pick in a spot that had a 5% chance of hitting considering Benning flubbed multiple times with picks that are proven to be 90%+ hit rates for NHL players in the top 10. Not to mention he got way more attempts to hit on those players in the top 10 part of the draft. It's apples and oranges.

 

Luongo netted us Markstrom, and plus pieces like Tanev and Edler kept Benning's illusion of being able to put together an NHL roster afloat until 2020 when the bottom fell out.

 

Benning's time here is to GMs what SVB is to banks. Winning GMs right now are copying a lot of what Gillis used to put together that 2011 team. Benning is going to be a case study of what not to do. 

 

Sorry bud. If you're going to be praising Gillis for how good he is running the team, drafting was not one of Gillis' strengths. Every single successful GM has relied on drafts to bring players up. He had an equivalent amount of time as Benning to draft and there's literally nothing to show for it in recent memory, aside from Horvat. And now he's gone. That's a terrible track record as a GM not to be able to draft anyone else except in the 1st round (Horvat, Hodgson) and Hutton. The misses are endless, whether it was in the 2nd round or the 6th round.

 

Gillis' impact was cute, but you're vastly overstating the significance. He tried many different things. Some worked. Some didn't.

If you're going to be comparing GMs, you best not leave out the negative parts. That's just dishonest dialogue.

[Provost]

39 minutes ago, iceman64 said:

Obviously you haven't looked at what our roster is going to look like cap wise in 2024 have you? cap hell, cap schmell... Not even..

Seriously, go have a look at the RFA's and FA's for 2024-25

Yes, we have looked and done the math… you obviously haven’t.

 

$33.4 million in cap space with only 10 players signed, and needing to add 13 roster players out of that.

 

Take away around half that entire cap space with around $17 million for just Petterson and Hronek, and that is probably being conservative.  It could be at high as $19 million or more if the cap is jumping up significantly.  $11.5 for Petterson and $7.5 for Hronek isn’t unreasonable market value now, never mind if the cap jumps up inflating salaries.

 

Mikheyev-Petterson-Boeser

XX-Miller-Kuzmenko

XX-XX-Garland

XX-XX-XX

XX

 

Hughes- XX

OEL - Hronek

XX-Poolman

XX-Brisebois

 

Demko

XX

 

That roster leaves $16.4 million for 11 players.

 

Assume $6 million for a lower end top 4D (Myers cost us $6 million years ago with a lower cap and he was considered by many in hockey to be a #5 at the time).  $4 million for an unspectacular value middle six winger.  
 

$6.4 million left for 9 more players… 
 

 Even if you hope for a huge $4-5 million dollar cap jump you are looking at half your roster being kids or low salary fringe NHLers at $1 million average.  If the cap does go up that much, signing players will also be more expensive right in lockstep and raise the numbers for signing players.

 

There is no magic bullet on the way to fix this…we don’t have a bunch (or any) blue chip prospects coming up who will likely play significant roles by then while on ELCs.

 

 

[Provost]

34 minutes ago, iceman64 said:

Were you even paying attention this whole time?! Do you anything about hockey, contract law and Canada at all???  I doubt it.. highly doubt it.. . 

 And of course Benning did flubs here and there but he did a lot of good things under the circumstances too but tell me what GM has ever been perfect or anywhere near close, being a GM is being involved in a crap shoot that you have limited odds at best! 

 I'm tired of hearing idiots bash someone when they haven't been watching since the start of the franchise or have been and are just that stupid. It's only one way or the other.. 

 So I'm going to ask you this to give you a chance to prove otherwise. 

 Go back and look at the broken,  half a full LOCKED in roster, the empty farm, and next to zero picks in 2013 plus Luongo's recapture. and tell me what YOU would have done.

 

 

 

Literally no GM during Benning’s tenure had fewer wins per cap dollar spent than Benning did.  Of the very few teams with worse records than us, they were budget teams spending $20-30 million less on their rosters.  You don’t have to invent any imagined metrics, it is sport and success is measured in wins and losses.

 

He ran the team for close to a decade and we were near the bottom of the league the entire time, it was winning fewer games by the end than when he started, you can’t blame that on Gillis.  When he left, the team was in worse cap trouble; and with a worse prospect pool than he inherited (at least he had Horvat from Gillis… when he left there weren’t any Horvat level prospects)… that is stunningly hard to do when you are finishing near the bottom of the league every year.  Gillis failed in drafting, but he was also picking late.  His only top ten pick was a home run, Horvat is a top 5 pick in a redraft that year.  Heck, Benning’s main success was right away when he took over with the “terrible” Gillis roster, before he started dismantling it.  The more moves he made, the worse the results on the ice.  His best attribute was drafting and he was below average in that as well.  He whiffed on half his top picks, didn’t unearth any late round gems, and managed to find NHL players in the 2nd and 3rd rounds just a little below historical averages. 

 

He was a terrible GM and was given way more leeway to dig out than other GMs who couldn’t get close to a .500 record, never mind playoffs and success there.

 

Notice how no one is beating down the door to hire him.

Edited May 11, 2023 by Provost

[Elias Pettersson]

1 hour ago, Provost said:

Yes, we have looked and done the math… you obviously haven’t.

 

$33.4 million in cap space with only 10 players signed, and needing to add 13 roster players out of that.

 

Take away around half that entire cap space with around $17 million for just Petterson and Hronek, and that is probably being conservative.  It could be at high as $19 million or more if the cap is jumping up significantly.  $11.5 for Petterson and $7.5 for Hronek isn’t unreasonable market value now, never mind if the cap jumps up inflating salaries.

 

Mikheyev-Petterson-Boeser

XX-Miller-Kuzmenko

XX-XX-Garland

XX-XX-XX

XX

 

Hughes- XX

OEL - Hronek

XX-Poolman

XX-Brisebois

 

Demko

XX

 

That roster leaves $16.4 million for 11 players.

 

Assume $6 million for a lower end top 4D (Myers cost us $6 million years ago with a lower cap and he was considered by many in hockey to be a #5 at the time).  $4 million for an unspectacular value middle six winger.  
 

$6.4 million left for 9 more players… 
 

 Even if you hope for a huge $4-5 million dollar cap jump you are looking at half your roster being kids or low salary fringe NHLers at $1 million average.  If the cap does go up that much, signing players will also be more expensive right in lockstep and raise the numbers for signing players.

 

There is no magic bullet on the way to fix this…we don’t have a bunch (or any) blue chip prospects coming up who will likely play significant roles by then while on ELCs.

 

 

Not to get too technical, but you forgot, PDG, so we actually have 13 players signed with $16.4 million in cap space.  Add $6 million for the cap increase and it's $22.4 million to sign 10 guys.  Out of those 10, you are looking at Podkolzin, Kravtsov, Aman, Joshua, Hirose and Johansson that should be in the lineup.  Maybe Raty too, but let's leave him out.  That's around $8 million.  So, you have $14.4 million left over for 4 guys.  That's easily enough to have 2 big contracts and then 1 middle type contract plus around $1 million for a backup goalie.  Also, we have the option to buy out OEL and save $5 million on top.  If OEL doesn't produce next season he will certainly be bought out in 2024.  Same with Poolman.  Garland and Boeser may also be easier to trade next summer.

 

We aren't going to be in cap heaven by any means next summer, but we will be much better positioned than this summer to make some moves.  

Edited May 11, 2023 by Elias Pettersson

[iceman64]

1 hour ago, Dazzle said:

Sorry bud. If you're going to be praising Gillis for how good he is running the team, drafting was not one of Gillis' strengths. Every single successful GM has relied on drafts to bring players up. He had an equivalent amount of time as Benning to draft and there's literally nothing to show for it in recent memory, aside from Horvat. And now he's gone. That's a terrible track record as a GM not to be able to draft anyone else except in the 1st round (Horvat, Hodgson) and Hutton. The misses are endless, whether it was in the 2nd round or the 6th round.

 

Gillis' impact was cute, but you're vastly overstating the significance. He tried many different things. Some worked. Some didn't.

If you're going to be comparing GMs, you best not leave out the negative parts. That's just dishonest dialogue.

Praising Gillis? Might want to read again, he got us a good team but locked it up long term and sold the farm to get it like every other GM has, hardly praising him for anything other than signing a "bit" tougher/grittier roster than we usually have. Sorry, sorry but it's an honest dialogue and although some won't like it, it's true, believe me I wish it weren't so.

[iceman64]

1 hour ago, Provost said:

Literally no GM during Benning’s tenure had fewer wins per cap dollar spent than Benning did.  Of the very few teams with worse records than us, they were budget teams spending $20-30 million less on their rosters.  You don’t have to invent any imagined metrics, it is sport and success is measured in wins and losses.

 

He ran the team for close to a decade and we were near the bottom of the league the entire time, it was winning fewer games by the end than when he started, you can’t blame that on Gillis.  When he left, the team was in worse cap trouble; and with a worse prospect pool than he inherited (at least he had Horvat from Gillis… when he left there weren’t any Horvat level prospects)… that is stunningly hard to do when you are finishing near the bottom of the league every year.  Gillis failed in drafting, but he was also picking late.  His only top ten pick was a home run, Horvat is a top 5 pick in a redraft that year.  Heck, Benning’s main success was right away when he took over with the “terrible” Gillis roster, before he started dismantling it.  The more moves he made, the worse the results on the ice.  His best attribute was drafting and he was below average in that as well.  He whiffed on half his top picks, didn’t unearth any late round gems, and managed to find NHL players in the 2nd and 3rd rounds just a little below historical averages. 

 

He was a terrible GM and was given way more leeway to dig out than other GMs who couldn’t get close to a .500 record, never mind playoffs and success there.

 

Notice how no one is beating down the door to hire him.

I'll pick that apart in the morning, but saying cap dollars is crazy, and you fail to see his second job of keeping the fans in the seats as all the old contracts came off, which God knows I wouldn't have wanted to take that on, and then try to build at the same time? F me! 

 And on top of that, if I was a player in the NHL the last place I'd play unless it was a short tenure, why? Because the fans SUCK, just as bad as the media as fans believe anything the media says in Vancouver whether it's true or not. 

The way to describe it from top to bottom is "Bush league" and so laughable, yeah truth be known and the only "half" truth I ever heard from them is how Vancouver fans couldn't and wouldn't stand for a rebuild but from the locked in contacts we had from Gillis, we couldn't have done a rebuild if we wanted to.

 If Benning had of been handed a good roster, a good farm team and lots of good picks and then screwed it all up then I'd agree but it was the opposite!  Broken team, no farm, no picks and the picks he did have, he had to trade to put a roster together that had enough fans in the building to make Franko happy and that didn't help us along further either...

And to prove how stupid people can really be about it, of course it was called a f'n retool,, wtf else are you going to call something you can't rebuild because of locked in contracts?

Seriously? Omfg! 

[Provost]

6 hours ago, Elias Pettersson said:

Not to get too technical, but you forgot, PDG, so we actually have 13 players signed with $16.4 million in cap space.  Add $6 million for the cap increase and it's $22.4 million to sign 10 guys.  Out of those 10, you are looking at Podkolzin, Kravtsov, Aman, Joshua, Hirose and Johansson that should be in the lineup.  Maybe Raty too, but let's leave him out.  That's around $8 million.  So, you have $14.4 million left over for 4 guys.  That's easily enough to have 2 big contracts and then 1 middle type contract plus around $1 million for a backup goalie.  Also, we have the option to buy out OEL and save $5 million on top.  If OEL doesn't produce next season he will certainly be bought out in 2024.  Same with Poolman.  Garland and Boeser may also be easier to trade next summer.

 

We aren't going to be in cap heaven by any means next summer, but we will be much better positioned than this summer to make some moves.  

So you assume a bunch of guys who are fringe players will all work out but also not so well that they sign for much money.  Then you assume the cap goes up by more than even the most optimistic projections.  Even with that, you suggest that $14.4 million will get you two big contracts, a medium contract and another fringe player, which doesn’t add up, a big contract isn’t $4-5 million… especially if the cap is so high.  Certainly not big enough to find a top 4D and a top six winger plus two other players.
 

If the cap is $90 million, then Petterson and Hronek aren’t signing for $10 and $7 million…. They are signing for a combined $19 million or more instead.  
 

When you boil it all down, we will basically will have the space to find similarly priced replacements for Myers and Pearson (with slight raises accounting for cap inflation) and all the other bodies stay they same with random bottom end players continuing to fill out the roster.  So unless we can magically find a ton of value from the Pearson/Myers replacements on the UFA market… how exactly is our team going to be winning any Cups, or even a playoff team?  We don’t have blue chip prospects coming in to play significant roles.

 

Your capped out suggested roster is:

 

Mikheyev-Petterson-Boeser

$4-5 million winger-Miller-Kuzmenko

Podkzin-Aman-Garland

Kravtsov-Joshua-PDG

League minimum depth forward

 

Hughes-$6-7 million UFA D

OEL-Hronek

Hirose-Johansen 

League min D - League min D

 

Demko

$2 million backup 

 

Well, plan the parade….

 

Say optimistically we get Lekkerimaki as a middle six winger by then and push one of our young guys to the 2nd line.  We still have to find a legitimate 3rd D pairing and those guys cost $2-3 million each at least.

 

 

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by Provost

[Provost]

5 hours ago, iceman64 said:

I'll pick that apart in the morning, but saying cap dollars is crazy,

Saying wins per cap dollar spent isn’t crazy.  
 

No other team spending so much had so poor of results.  Benning’s accomplishment was that he was able to field teams that weren’t quite bad as teams like Arizona and Ottawa.  Of course they were budget teams with tens of millions less in budget to work with.

 

You keep going on about how many “locked” in players Benning inherited.  That is nonsense.

 

On contracts with more than a year or two of term left, he had the Sedins, Burrows, Hansen, Higgins, and Edler. All those players had positive value and produced well on the ice and brought in returns if traded.  Higgins was the only contract that was eventually bought out at the end, but he made a whopping $2.5 million.

 

Those “locked in” players from Gillis gave Benning his best ever season in his whole tenure.  The more that left, the worse the team got.

 

You are crowing about Benning.  Talk about leaving “locked in” contracts.  He has left many long term contracts on players with negative value on the market.  I take the Sedins over OEL and Myers… then you have Ferland, Poolman, Garland, Boeser… plus all the players he signed and then spent top draft picks to get rid of.

 

 

[BlastPast]

The contract extensions (with NTC/NMC) that Gillis signed circa 2012-13 are what really bound the team's hands. They were justifiable at the time because of the performance of the team in the years during and prior to this period. Unfortunately, Gillis did very little future-building between 09-14 and as a result there was a scant internal supply of players to boost/supplement the existing roster. It was clear the team was trending down but unfortunately when you have 6 or so veterans with an NTC/NMC it effectively entrenches the roster, thus making the "disassembling" part of a rebuild (stupid term) difficult to achieve. 

[Elias Pettersson]

4 hours ago, Provost said:

So you assume a bunch of guys who are fringe players will all work out but also not so well that they sign for much money.  Then you assume the cap goes up by more than even the most optimistic projections.  Even with that, you suggest that $14.4 million will get you two big contracts, a medium contract and another fringe player, which doesn’t add up, a big contract isn’t $4-5 million… especially if the cap is so high.  Certainly not big enough to find a top 4D and a top six winger plus two other players.
 

If the cap is $90 million, then Petterson and Hronek aren’t signing for $10 and $7 million…. They are signing for a combined $19 million or more instead.  
 

When you boil it all down, we will basically will have the space to find similarly priced replacements for Myers and Pearson (with slight raises accounting for cap inflation) and all the other bodies stay they same with random bottom end players continuing to fill out the roster.  So unless we can magically find a ton of value from the Pearson/Myers replacements on the UFA market… how exactly is our team going to be winning any Cups, or even a playoff team?  We don’t have blue chip prospects coming in to play significant roles.

 

Your capped out suggested roster is:

 

Mikheyev-Petterson-Boeser

$4-5 million winger-Miller-Kuzmenko

Podkzin-Aman-Garland

Kravtsov-Joshua-PDG

League minimum depth forward

 

Hughes-$6-7 million UFA D

OEL-Hronek

Hirose-Johansen 

League min D - League min D

 

Demko

$2 million backup 

 

Well, plan the parade….

 

Say optimistically we get Lekkerimaki as a middle six winger by then and push one of our young guys to the 2nd line.  We still have to find a legitimate 3rd D pairing and those guys cost $2-3 million each at least.

 

 

 

Why do you consider all those guys "fringe" players?  Podkolzin was a top 10 pick.  The expectation is that at some point he will be a top 6 winger.  He's only 21.  Give him a few more years.  Joshua and Aman are the perfect pairing on the 4th line.  They even moved up the lineup this year.  As 4th liners, they are not going to be paid $4 million.  $1-2 million is the max.  If we can't afford them then Allvin will simply find other players to play on the 4th line the same way he found Joshua and Aman.  

 

Hirose and Johansson are literally our top 2 Dman prospects, so not sure why you would call then fringe players either.  They will likely be in the lineup at some point over the next year or two.  The only real question mark is Kravtsov.  If he doesn't pan out then we have Hoglander, Klimovich and Lekkerimaki to replace him.  At some point our draft picks and prospects need roster spots.

 

Every indication is that the cap will be at $90 million in the next year or two.  At $90 million we can easily fit extensions of Petey and Hronek into the lineup at $19 million total plus have millions left over to sign other guys.  I won't get into lineups here as things can easily change, but with Miller and Hughes locked down for the next four years at $8 million each, Demko locked at $5 million and Petey and Hronek at $19 million, that's $40 million for our 5 core guys, plus Kuzmenko at let's say $7.5 million on a new deal, so up to $48 million for the core 6.  That's a little over half the cap for the core guys.  Every team will be around that level.  Even New Jersey will be at $45 million+ for their core 6 once everyone is signed (Meier and Bratt).

 

[DSVII]

On 5/10/2023 at 11:45 PM, iceman64 said:

Were you even paying attention this whole time?! Do you anything about hockey, contract law and Canada at all???  I doubt it.. highly doubt it.. . 

 And of course Benning did flubs here and there but he did a lot of good things under the circumstances too but tell me what GM has ever been perfect or anywhere near close, being a GM is being involved in a crap shoot that you have limited odds at best! 

 I'm tired of hearing idiots bash someone when they haven't been watching since the start of the franchise or have been and are just that stupid. It's only one way or the other.. 

 So I'm going to ask you this to give you a chance to prove otherwise. 

 Go back and look at the broken,  half a full LOCKED in roster, the empty farm, and next to zero picks in 2013 plus Luongo's recapture. and tell me what YOU would have done.

 

 

 

I was paying attention man. Were you? 

 

Name the 13 NTCs Gillis left behind you keep spouting 

 

Haha how magnanimous. That must feel good eh? You really don't have any authority or judgment really to give anyone a chance. So don't talk like you need to be impressed dude. At the end of the day, we're all the same random idiots ;). I'll partially play your game though for fun. 

 

That 'broken' roster was still a 100 point team. You saw Benning trade away an NTC in Jason Garrison. I would have bottomed out, rebuilt and have the Sedins mentor the next generation. I would have targeted Shea Theodore and the 10th with Kesler (which Anaheim was wiling to do seeing as they exposed Theodore later). Accept the fact that the team would have a down year. you'd be surprised how many NTCs would waive if you tell them you're rebuilding.

 

A short retool where you horde your picks would have worked too, move out older vets like Hansen/Higgins/Burrows and retool. Actually draft Willie Nylander with the 6th overall in 2014 and keep Jared McCann. Be patient with developing and drafting D rather than trading for reclaimation projects. That's the thing about Benning, you can beat his record by just standing pat and not trade away draft picks or sign UFAs. I wanted Tkachuk in 2016 plus Alex Debrincat in the 2nd round in 2016. I would not have done the Gudbranson trade and rebuild a line with McCann and Debrincat. I wanted Nicholas Hague over Kole Lind in 2017, so there's another D man right there. Keep Forsling, don't sign Eriksson, Beagle, Roussel, Gagner.

 

I would actually let our prospects marinate in the AHL first like Hogs, Virtanen, McCann. And see Utica/Abbottsford as an organization tool to instill good habits and basics in our prospects, not as a window dressing afterthought to be filled with AHL lifers and vets. Benning never used the farm team as a tool to set his prospects up for success.

 

McCann 

 

Hogs

 

Jake

 

 

I would retain and promote Brackett and listen to all his recomendations, along with Gradin's collaboration. And not force people out because I needed to be the smartest guy int he room.

 

I would also not hire Rick Celebrini, and retain Mike Burnstein as our head athletic trainer. I'm fairly certain he was the reason why Chris Tanev's career took a nose dive in injuries.

 

Man games lost in $Cap

Chris Tanev's man games played during Celebrini's time

 

 

 

 

 

As for Lu contract, the Luongo recapture was retro-active. Gillis obeyed the rules of the CBA, I can't fault him for having the league go back in time to punish him for a rule that didn't exist at the time.

Secondly, The penalty was only applied because Benning refused to trade for Luongo's contract back to LTIRetire him. So really he bears some responsibility for this as well.  https://canucksarmy.com/news/report-canucks-rejected-opportunity-reacquire-roberto-luongo-ltir-purposes-panthers-before-retired-2019 

 

 

 

Anyways that's my last word on this. Won't derail the thread.

 

 

Edited May 12, 2023 by DSVII

[CanucksJay]

On 5/10/2023 at 8:26 PM, Provost said:

You forgot us throwing in a 2nd round pick….

Lol i see a Myers, AB and a 2nd for Seth Jones

[DSVII]

21 hours ago, Dazzle said:

Sorry bud. If you're going to be praising Gillis for how good he is running the team, drafting was not one of Gillis' strengths. Every single successful GM has relied on drafts to bring players up. He had an equivalent amount of time as Benning to draft and there's literally nothing to show for it in recent memory, aside from Horvat. And now he's gone. That's a terrible track record as a GM not to be able to draft anyone else except in the 1st round (Horvat, Hodgson) and Hutton. The misses are endless, whether it was in the 2nd round or the 6th round.

 

Gillis' impact was cute, but you're vastly overstating the significance. He tried many different things. Some worked. Some didn't.

 

How many GMs reach Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals? You get there doing more right than wrong. I'm not saying Gillis was perfect, yes the scouting needed a revamp and his later trades sucked (derek roy and sami pahlsson come to mind) but his mandate was to get back to the finals. If anything he was too conservative. We had no business holding onto our 1st rounder in 2011 if we were going all in.

 

As for drafting, even Milbury drafted Luongo and Chara. Drafting is not the end all be all of evaluating a GM.

 

Quote

If you're going to be comparing GMs, you best not leave out the negative parts. That's just dishonest dialogue.

You can check the receipts, I've never said Gillis had the better draft record, but with the capital he had, he got some decent players. You can't deny Benning has the superior advantage of draft capital and position. To the point any of us with a hockey magazine can walk away with more nhl playerd than Gillis. That is the nuance i factor into that evaluation.

 

I'm not giving a guy too much crap when Benning had the equivalent of a training wheel handicap picking in the top 5 or 10 for five of his eight drafts (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019) while Gillis picked in the 10th spot just twice (2008,2013).

 

What is dishonest, is trying to somehow blame Benning's ineptitude at managing the cap on Gillis. And absolving Benning of the responsibility of running this team into the ground. 

What is dishonest, is claiming that the team Gillis inherited was a set and forget Cup contender, considering they missed playoffs 2 of the last 3 seasons before Gillis took the job and people openly questioned the Sedins.

 

Gillis was a rookie GM who made some good moves, and bad moves, but to call him the worst GM in Canucks history after seeing the last eight years on display is revisionist at best and dishonest at worst. 

 

Anyways, back to talking about the 11th pick.

Edited May 12, 2023 by DSVII

[MaxVerstappen33]

23 hours ago, iceman64 said:

Were you even paying attention this whole time?! Do you anything about hockey, contract law and Canada at all???  I doubt it.. highly doubt it.. . 

 And of course Benning did flubs here and there but he did a lot of good things under the circumstances too but tell me what GM has ever been perfect or anywhere near close, being a GM is being involved in a crap shoot that you have limited odds at best! 

 I'm tired of hearing idiots bash someone when they haven't been watching since the start of the franchise or have been and are just that stupid. It's only one way or the other.. 

 So I'm going to ask you this to give you a chance to prove otherwise. 

 Go back and look at the broken,  half a full LOCKED in roster, the empty farm, and next to zero picks in 2013 plus Luongo's recapture. and tell me what YOU would have done.

 

 

 

I agree. The Benning derangement syndrome gets rather tiring. They have convinced themselves that he was one of the worst ever. Even though he never signed a max contract. If He didn't do the OEL deal, he would have left the team with not a single bad long term contract.